The Interesting and Most Illuminous Life of Arielle Kim
by ficriel
Summary: 14-year old Arielle Kim meets the person she wants to know and like. But every time she tries to get closer, her terrible friends Eunice, Anya, and Shelly ruin everything. Will she ever get to meet him? Or possibly other things?


Arielle groaned. It was 3:07 already, and Victor had said he would be here by 3:00. Arielle reached for her phone to send him an angry text. As she was typing, the door swung open and in came Victor, his hair poofy, and looking, as usual, a bit confused.

What had she been thinking? A study meet-up at T4 with _Victor_? Even if they were just meeting to work on their project for science, it seemed awfully like a _date._ At least Victor arranged it, so it wasn't like she asked him out. Wait, did that mean that technically _he_ asked _her_ out? Arielle realized she had been staring at Victor, and she quickly looked away. She busied herself with moving the supplies for the project around on the table in front of her. Victor walked towards her table. He sat down across from her, sitting on the very edge of his chair as if ready for a quick escape.

"Uh, hi," he said, looking down at the table with art supplies strewn across it.

"Hi," Arielle replied, hoping that he didn't hear the shakiness in her voice.

"I'm gonna go get something," he told her, gesturing vaguely towards the line of people ordering their teas. "Do you, uh, want anything?"

Arielle was about to say no, but felt that would be impolite.

"I'd like a passion fruit green tea with lychee, and, um, no boba." It was too dangerous a time to risk choking on boba. Especially with someonearound.

Victor nodded, and walked towards the ordering counter. He came back holding two cups with straws. Arielle noticed the little bobas at the bottom of her cup, and frowned, but Victor was too busy slurping on his tea (in a very unmanly way) to notice.

"So," she asked him over the sound of gulping, "what should we do first?"

Victor looked up at her, finally releasing his tea.

"We're done with the writing already, so do you want to do the drawings?"

"Sure." Arielle agreed, wishing the conversation would be less awkward. Why did he have to make this so hard? She looked back at their poster, and started to copy rough outlines from the Science textbook. Victor just sat, looking out the window. Arielle added some pusheens to the sketches, wondering how she would get through another 20 minutes like this. Victor wasn't even doing anything productive at all!

Unable to stand it any further, Arielle looked over at Victor, who seemed transfixed by some pigeons in the parking lot. "I finished the drawings, now you can do the coloring." Couldn't the ugly lump even make an _effort_ to talk? The pigeons outside weren't _that_ exciting. At least not to her. Victor picked up the colored pencils and began to distress the paper with his lack of artistic ability. Arielle almost groaned. There was no way she was getting a good grade on this project.

Victor's stomach rumbled. He gave her an apologetic look. Arielle decided to take pity on him, and she reached into her backpack to pull out one of the 3 fig bars she had never eaten. Wait. Was he really that bad? Yes. Yes, he was. The lump wouldn't talk, was staring at things outside instead of working, and when he did work, it was horrible. She threw it on the table in front of Victor.

"There. I don't like those anyway." she told him.

"Why?" he asked while coloring over the pusheens.

"I don't think you want to know why."

Victor unwrapped the fig bar. Arielle waited until he had the whole fig bar in his mouth, and then she began to read aloud from the online article on her phone.

"You know that flowers are pollinated by bees, which fly from flower to flower. Figs, however, are inverted flowers, so the pollinators, in this case, fig wasps, have to crawl inside the fig. The fig wasp actually lays eggs inside the fig, and the baby wasps hatch inside the fruit. The surviving females lay their eggs in another fig, pollinating the flower, and starting the cycle over again. So yes, there may be dead wasps in figs. However-"

A loud retching sound prevented Arielle from continuing. Victor was choking on the fig bar, frantically reaching for a napkin to spit it out. Arielle laughed.

"But that can't be true," Victor insisted after he had found the napkins. "It didn't feel like I ate a wasp."

"Have you eaten wasps before?"

"Good point," he admitted, glaring at her.

"That was revenge." Arielle said.

"What did I do?"

"You didn't color the pusheens."

"There weren't any pusheens."

"You meanie poo! The pusheens are right there!" Arielle pointed to the five pusheens right under the title.

"I thought those were dots."

"!"

"Okay, okay. Fine. I'm sorry. Just my luck I end up with a fig-fearing, pusheen-obsessed maniac as a partner for Science."

Arielle frowned at him over her tea. She wanted to take a dainty sip, but she really didn't want to embarrass herself by choking on boba.

"Is there something wrong with your tea?" Victor asked, ever the innocent gentleman. The poopyhead. He probably noticed and asked for boba just to annoy her.

"Nope. Just perfect." Arielle said sweetly, poking at the bobas in her tea with her straw. Two can play at that game. She made sure her straw was away from the patches of boba and took a long sip.

"Good. I would _never_ want you to be unhappy," he told her, his tone practically dripping with sarcasm.

"It's nice to know you care about me."

Victor's eyes shot up to hers, and Arielle found herself unable to look away as she realized the implications of what she had said. What had she been thinking? No, she hadn't been thinking. Arielle looked back down at the science project and began to color in the spots Victor had forgotten to distress, trying hard to conceal what she was sure was a blush.

"Like anyone's ever going to care about you." Victor snorted, trying to salvage their conversation with some casual insults. It was the wrong thing to say.

Arielle got up and dumped all her supplies in her bag. She had been stupid. So completely, indescribably _stupid._ She roughly stuffed the poster into Victor's hands and walked towards the door, her back to him.

"Get it done by Monday," she said stiffly without turning around. Arielle pulled open the door and stalked out, leaving Victor staring at an empty seat and a cup of milk tea.


End file.
